Snapshot by Nigel Roth

Jenny sipped her sherry-oak Macallan. She’d got the taste for it while studying in v-London, and sacrificing hunger for liquid meditation. Jenny’s academic funding came from her earlier career as an accountant, and from her father, who was a virtual lawyer in v-New York. She’d returned to university as a mature student with a taste for mature whisky.

While in v-London, keeping on task had been difficult. The collision of a pijama-based cyberlife, an overflowing bank account, and next-hour drone delivery of alcohol, had almost been too much to handle. Many times during the three years Jenny had wavered, she said, leaning toward a disengaging retreat back home, and ten back to the MBA in v-London, and the status and wealth it promised.

The night she left Simon had been the worst and best of her time studying, as splits often are.

From a slow build involving light-barrier lunches and socially-distanced walks, Simon had quickly begun to take over the running of Jenny’s life. He changed her wardrobe, encouraging brevity and extinguishing wool. He'd repainted the room she slept in using the Roomovator app, describing, in terms he felt she could understand, how orange activated his sex chakra and blue simply did not. He developed a list of foods for her that would help ‘them’ fight the virus, stave-off mid-evening cravings for chocolate, and strengthen their resolve to get through the remaining year of study. He had even made a list of spices to be used in certain quantities in the foods ‘they’ prepared, explaining the values of each and the signs to look for if the spice was non-synergistic with her digestive system.

While Jenny had always strived to live well, and saw merit in changing things to improve one's time in pandemicity, she had begun to think of Simon as a dictator, and often worked in dark-mode to avoid contact.

The final straw for Jenny was, she said, the fetish party.